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In MotoGP, the best of the best motorcycle racers ride million-dollar machines at the razor’s edge. Watch any of the videos of them in slow motion and you’ll see the aggressive nature of balancing traction, slide, acceleration, and braking at almost an impossible level.
Motorcycle crashes can happen in the blink of an eye. Anyone who has experienced a crash knows they suck. Crashing a motorcycle is the bane of our existence and can result in injury, or worse, death. The thrill of these machines affords us with the feeling of high reward due to their high risk quotient. And no one knows this more than the professionals on the MotoGP circuit. They have all crashed numerous times in their careers.
Cornering a motorcycle is one of the most common situations when you might lose traction and crash your bike. Depending on how that bike loses traction, the result will be a high-side or low-side crash. How your body reacts to that unscheduled dismount varies.
Low-side crashes can result from a number of incidents. Perhaps, during overly aggressive braking, the front wheel loses traction and the bike essentially folds in on itself, tossing you into the ground on the side where the bike falls. Perhaps you learned the bike over too much and applied too much throttle, and the rear tire steps out and the slides out from underneath you. No matter the cause, you have gone down.
The worst of the two is the dreaded high side crash. This occurs when the rear wheel steps out of alignment with the front tire, and when it regains traction, it snaps back into place behind the front tire, but with a high enough amount of energy that causes it to over correct, straighten up and also stand up. The action causes a bucking sensation resulting in the rider being tossed off the motorcycle.
You might think at this point in the article that we would show you a number of crashes, but you can search YouTube on your own time for examples. Here are some of the best saves from the 2017 MotoGP Season, which just concluded.
These best of the best motorcycle racers know how to stay calm under pressure, and when there is the slightest margin to keep that bike in control, they do so.